WINTER SOLSTICE SPIRAL DANCE

SPIRAL DANCE ~ 16th ANNUAL SOLSTICE CELEBRATION!

Tuesday, December 21, 2010 ~ 6:30pm

Little Lake Grange, 291 School St – Willits, CA

Theme: A Council of All Beings

We celebrate the turning of the Wheel as Yule comes to the forest

*The trees, the salmon, the sacred deer & animals…

All have something to share with us about the future

and our human interconnectedness with the Web of Life*
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~ a family friendly program ~  Candle lighting & sing along  to be followed by the Spiral Dance!

We invite you to wear a costume or mask or head piece

that celebrates your love of nature – animal, bird,  tree, fairy, bee…

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A Benefit for the Grange Remodel Project  ~  $5-10 at the door (CHILDREN FREE)

Midwinter Traditions –

for Willits and Beyond!

by Ann Waters

Event Calendar – Willits Winter Solstice Celebration & Spiral Dance

December 21st, 2010 at 6:30pm at Little Lake Grange, 291 School St, Willits

What is Midwinter, and why do we celebrate it?  The longest night of the year and the dawn that followed was considered a special turning point in the solar year for our ancestors.  Looking for the Sun’s return is still a bright thought on our dark winter nights.

The ancient traditions of old Europe would have found us dancing the longest night into dawn. The drum jam and dancing needs YOU to bring your drum and rattles and join in the merriment as we dance together as long as we can stand up.

“COUNCIL OF ALL BEINGS” is the theme for our 16^th Annual Willits Winter Solstice Celebration & Spiral Dance. We will all participate in a wonderful play that is about Solstice, the forest creatures, human community & the Earth. This traditional Willits celebration is an evening of songs, dance, theater, candle lighting, making wishes, and ends with a spiral dance and drum jam. Children of all ages are invited to join in the Dance of the Faires & Creatures as well as in the opening procession.

This year is incredible…we hope you will come dressed as your favorite animal, plant, tree or fairie, elf, or as yourself in your brightest ceremonial garb!

More about this seasonal celebration…The marking of the yearly cycles of the seasons was a matter of life & death for our ancestors.  – they measured and noted the sun’s path and length of days for reasons of weather and agriculture, or for their own nomadic changes.  We might do well to begin to note the natural cycles as a part of our return to nature- our own bio-logic consciousness…our shift into a new way of being…solar values.

Peoples all over the world and throughout time have celebrated the turning of the  wheel, the cycles of the seasons upon which all life depends. One of the most celebrated the world over is Midwinter – celebrated with lights as we honor the Sun’s return on December 21st!

Winter Solstice has a special magic that resonates deep within us.  It is the season of hope and love, of goodwill and sharing, of making merry, making wishes and giving blessings. On this, the darkest night, they come together, to honor the time of gestation, of dreaming and inner sight.

Winter Solstice Eve is the darkest, longest night of the year – midwinter to our ancestors,  the very beginning of winter to us.  The long dark nights are a time to sleep more and eat less, to rejuvenate, to be still and quiet, to go within to know and heal oneself,  to awaken our curiosity and nurture our creativity, to tell our stories,  to incubate our  ideas and our dreams.

Worldwide – through the years, most cultures have held festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations – quite often involving light and candles around this time.

Community celebrations that mark the seasons bring us together regularly and promote deeper relationships.

Come to the Spiral Dance December 21st, 2010 at 6:30pm at Little Lake Grange, 291 School St, Willits – and make a seasonal tradition for your family that goes beyond the commercial feeling that now pervades this time of year!

This non-denominational event is open to all ages and families are encouraged.

Bring the family, drums, rattles, and your costumed self.

Suggested donation of $5-10 for adults, families $10. Children free.  No-one turned away for lack of funds.

Donations will be used to repair and maintain the beloved Great Hall of the Grange Building.

For more information contact: abweller@pacific.net – see notices on www.anniegreenjeans.com or  call 459-2418

Blessings of Yule!

—by Ken Humphreys—

Slow and slow turns the Wheel of the Year.

To the season of silence, cold, bleak and drear.

Hope’s to be born, from the dark, wintry night—

The feast is prepared, and the Yule-log alight.

Round is the wreath, as the year turns round;

Green is the Holly—Life midst Death found;

The berries red as the Sunrise of Birth

Of Hope to the world, and Joy to the Earth.

Bright blessings of Yule! May they shine on your life!

May you feast, and rejoice, and set aside strife!

Hope and gladness be with you, gloom and misery fly

Away, at the Birth of the Lord of the Sky!

AVATAR – A MYTH FOR OUR FUTURE

AVATAR!

Hollywood has brought us yet another opportunity to tune into a possible future…

I loved it deeply, have seen it twice so far (3D was great!) and will see it again, I know.

Reading so many descriptions, reviews, got to give my own…

For me it was at least an offering to the vision of a beautiful future for our own planet – a vision of  community, shared food, simple life in nature.  Ok – that is merely the surface – I am trying to speak of DEEP ECOLOGY, the right relationships that can come with reverence for other Beings – be they trees or animals.  All of this was implied in the world of the Tribal Forest People.

I want to speak right now of our relationship to the meat we eat.  As a cook & nutritionist I have been through many phases of vegetarianism since 1970 when I discovered brown rice & macrobiotics.  I now eat a small amount of local or organic poultry & wild fish, as well as using broth from bones.  Although I do not kill my own meat, I have done so.  years ago I was a communal caretaker of goats, chickens, rabbits, ducks.  We fished and certainly i gutted, descaled & cleaned lots of fish as a child with my grandfather. I believe that we each should be able & willing to do that – to clean the organs, cleave meat from bone, access the animal’s raw biology & flesh.  If we cannot bear to think about that – how can we justify being carnivores – eating such an offering from the life blood & sacrifice of this Being?   And, so – I ask us all to question our inner truth, what do we eat, how do we offer it into our very metabolism, as it becomes part of our own flesh, do we give thanks, do we revere the life that has been lost to save our own?  It is the true spirituality of food, and an opportunity to again – say Grace, give thanks and make the food into love & a blessing to our bodies.  (And I am talking about plants here too, by the way)

So, let’s think about the hunting scenes…using bow & arrow, knife, a more equal challenge between the prey & the hunter…

In the words of Lauren Raine – www.threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com

…They even had enough anthropological understanding to include the hunter who prays over the body of the fallen prey, offering thanks for the gift of its meat – this is, indeed, what native peoples universally did in both myth and in practice, recognizing and honoring that the animal has sacrificed its life to sustain the life of the tribe. Most Americans do not equate the hamburger they buy with an animal that has lost its life, let alone do they comprehend a spiritual system that respects the exchange of life force and energy that has taken place. What a wonderful concept to introduce to the young people who watched the movie…

To finish – I invite each of you readers to see this movie as a deeper symbol of more than the politics between conqueror & conquered (European Invaders vs Indians, etc) and other wonderful analogies that can be made about resource extraction, but rather – as a mythology for the spirituality of nature & our place in it, the very Gaian Philosophy of Lovelock & Deep Ecologists such as Joanna Macy!  I will even take it one step further – in the scenes at the Tree of Life - we witnessed a ritual of healing involving the synthesis of an entire community acting & tuning as one – the possibilities of which break open our own limited beliefs in “Self & Other”.  Tune to each other, become true community, unite in compassion & shared life, healing.  Enjoy, live in joy, fly!  I think I got it.